A song drifted over the camp—
Both Moon and Tinker sneered. Moses occupied himself with the communicator—tuning in on random channels—getting a lot of static.
“Try 83.6,” suggested Toothpick.
Moses tuned in on Josephson’s eager face.
“Hi,” said Moses. “What are you doing here?”
Josephson looked sheepish. “Just conducting a Hunt for you. All of you.”
Moon and Tinker crowded behind him.
“A Hunt?”
“A really Big Hunt,” said Josephson, a little pride showing.
“He means to kill us all,” said Tinker.
Josephson glanced up at Tinker.
“I’m afraid that’s right. A job is a job. My job is to get you.”
Tinker laughed and changed the channel back to light musicals.
“Let’s not get to know our enemy too well. We may not be able to kill him when we meet.”
“Try 21.9,” said Toothpick.
Tinker raised an eyebrow and turned the dial. Val’s face appeared. He was wearing dark glasses.
“Who’s there?” asked Val. Behind him a very fat man stood up—fat Walter.
“Tinker here!”
Val smiled his cynical best. “Got bad news for you Followers of Olga. You’ve come to the river at the wrong time.”
“How so?”
“There’s no conjunction. Jupiter is alone in Sagittarius,” explained Val, groping for his collection of beads. “Our astrologers have analyzed your bead sequence—now stop me if I’m wrong, but it shows a ringed bead over here. Saturn, right?”
Tinker nodded—caring little about the occult side of their armies’ existence. He was here to fight and survive. Winning the favor of the gods was Hip’s job.
Val continued: “There are four other beads together in this part of the string. The big one we guess to be Jupiter. Jupiter and Saturn happen to be about fifty-five degrees apart on the zodiac now. That much is fine. But those other bright lights that are wandering around in Sagittarius are just space junk. We’ve found Venus and Mercury. They’re in Gemini with the sun. Mercury is actually going into transit the day after tomorrow, if you’re interested. Mars is off somewhere too—about a hundred degrees out of Sagittarius. Uranus is way over in Pisces. So your beads are all wrong.”
Moses wrote down Val’s information and gave it to a runner to take to Hip. It might help.
Tinker called over Val’s shoulder to fat Walter.
“Is he right, Walter?”
Walter nodded. “That craft you are sitting in has good optics. Ask it to check these positions tonite. Our own Bird Dog IV made these sightings.”
Hip just smiled at Val’s zodiacal diagram. He strung a new sequence of beads and sent it back to Moses. Then he returned to his chants. He knew little of astronomy—Ball designed the beads.
“Looks like he just added two white beads for Mars and Uranus,” said Moses. “His conjunction of four planets is the same.”
Their captive Huntercraft turned its optics upwards. They leaned on the screen, quickly confirming Val’s words.
“Jupiter, Saturn and Mars are where Val said,” observed Moses. “We’re too late for Uranus tonite. Mercury and Venus won’t be visible until dawn. Looks like the beads are wrong.”
Tinker shrugged. “So what? Were you expecting a miracle?”
Moses didn’t know.
The aurora pastels flared—blue, banana and avocado. Hip screamed his chants. Sweating in dance, they sang words of Love and Freedom.
“Now those crazy fools are dropping their weapons,” complained old Moon bitterly.
“It is what they came for—ceremony, prayers—” explained gentle Moses. Toothpick had no comment.
“But their stupid frenzy is spreading to our people from Dundas. Everybody is dropping their weapons. They look like they are going to dance till they drop. Who will fight off the hunters tomorrow?” said Moon. “Who will defend them?”
The answer drifted over the camps: “Love will save us. Olga is love. Love will save us.”
Suddenly Toothpick shouted: “Take me Outside.”
Puzzled, Moses carried him out.
“Hold me up.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why, just point me to the sky and shut your eyes—oooh!”
Toothpick convulsed. His skin tickled Moses’ hand. From his nose a beam of pure white light penciled into the dark sky. It was near midnight and Sagittarius was directly overhead. Old Moon stood in the Huntercraft, puzzled. A similar pencil of light issued from Ball. A small meteor crossed the sky—a long white scratch on ebony. Another meteor, then another. Then there were hundreds of tiny white and yellow scratches, hardly more than faint curlicues that faded as fast as they appeared.
Ten miles away in the Huntercraft camp, Val and Walter watched the sky.
“Tiny meteors,” commented fat Walter.
“And I’ll bet some superstitious troglodyte in that camp is attributing all the fireworks to Olga,” scoffed Val.
“I suppose,” said Walter. “Listen to this pickup from the shaft cap. They’re singing those old songs we heard on the tightbeam.”
“It will be their last night to sing,” said Val. “Tomorrow another hundred Huntercraft arrive. We’ll have enough to take them.”
Double-bladed axes, short swords, and metal spear points had proliferated in the camp. Dawn found the troops unarmed and exhausted from the night’s ceremonial dancing. Weapons were scattered everywhere, dusty and underfoot. The perimeter guards were armed, though; and when the first enemy craft appeared the rest of the army sobered fast and rearmed themselves. White-suited archers marched up spirals. Huntercraft darted back and forth spraying arrows.
Josephson talked to the CO, requesting aid.
“You’ll have to handle it at the local level,” said the CO. “There are similar uprisings on most of the land masses. A million or so buckeyes are involved. That should be no problem for a planet with over three trillions. Use the manual overrides, but handle it locally.”
A heavy spear struck his craft. The metal point penetrated the hull, releasing a trickle of blue fluid. An idiot light went on. He left the battlefield for an emergency landing.
Tinker led his company into a shaft cap to clean up a group of hunters. He advanced downspiral swinging his bipennis. Heads rolled. Axemen and blademen followed him across shaft base and into the tubeways. They chopped into the walls and machinery. A bolus of bodies jammed the tube. They moved through the stilled tunnel to the next shaft cap and charged upspiral trapping a unit of hunters against the garage doors. When he finally fought his way back out into the sunlight it was early afternoon. His right arm was tired. He had a minor arrow wound in his left wrist. A coweye bound it. He returned to Mu Ren and napped.
Hugh Konte woke him up an hour later.
“Tinker! Moses and Hip are having some sort of a meeting in the rocks. We shot down a couple of Huntercraft, and a few more crashed. Toothpick recognized some of the emblems. They are from all over the continent. More arrive by the hour. Troops keep arriving in the tubeways too. I guess we’re going to have to do something.”
Tinker picked up his axe and followed Hugh to the meeting. Hip was depressed. “Last night was supposed to be the conjunction. Today we were supposed to be safe in the arms of Olga,” he said.
Tinker glanced around at the gathering of group leaders. Most bore wounds. One was a female coweye. In the distance he heard the drone of gathering Huntercraft.